The Birmingham Energy Institute is a focal point for the University and its national and international partners, to create change in the way we deliver, consume and think about energy. The focus being ‘Energy systems’, ‘The Business of Energy’, ‘Energy Transport’, and ‘Breakthroughs in Energy Technologies’.

Here are nine ways steel could be used in a clean industrial transformation:

1. Build an enormous tidal power station

This is the long-mooted plan to build an enormous tidal power station across the Severn Estuary. Around 1.5m tonnes of steel would be required for turbines, embankments and to reinforce the concrete – a good chunk of the UK’s current annual output of 10m tonnes.

2. Make more wind turbines

Anchoring wind turbines to the ground or seabed requires vast amounts of concrete reinforced with steel. Onshore wind uses an average of 160 tonnes of steel per megawatt, according to one 2011 estimate, while offshore the figure rises to 450 tonnes.

4. Turn steel into solar panels

Steel can be “sprayed” with photovoltaic material to create roofs and facades that can harvest solar energy. Researchers are evaluating thin film silicon, chalcopyrite and organic solar to find the best solution.

It won’t overtake regular solar panels just yet but, given roofs cover 1.8% of the UK’s land, the potential is enormous.

5. Heat your home – directly

Academics at Cardiff University have been working on a neat way to keep your home warm, using profiled perforated steel mounted on the south-facing walls of buildings. It is specially-treated to absorb as much solar energy as possible. The sun creates a warm boundary layer of air around the steel sheet, which a fan then distributes through the building.

6. Build big solar farms

7. Next generation pylons

The pylons familiar to most British people were designed in 1928. Demand from electric vehicles will soon grow massively, heating is becoming electric rather than gas-powered, and small-scale wind and solar generation all needs to be linked up.

9. Steel plants can keep us warm

The huge furnaces found at steel plants could be connected to local heating networks. At present, steel producers consider all that heat a costly byproduct. They even have to cool the water used in the manufacturing process between each use, which requires lots of energy. However, in harnessing the waste heat and selling it to consumers, they could even turn a profit.

Such a scheme already exists in Sheffield and could be extended to other steel towns such as Scunthorpe or Port Talbot.